A biocultural perspective of theory in international relations: Cognition, culture, and interaction

A paradox of international relations is that while its subject is ostensibly about multicultural interaction, culture has been treated as an epiphenomenon; either it has been viewed as a problem to be overcome, or it has been ignored. This underlies the theoretical crisis that has plagued the discipline since its inception. The failure to "problematize" culture has convoluted our understanding of international politics and disguised the parameters of social science. In this dissertation I argue that the failure of international relations theories is rooted in a misconceptualization of phenomena--agents, structures, and their interaction. This misconceptualization has perpetuated structuralism and denied agency. Recent attempts to overcome the agent-structure dualism continue the structuralist bias. Thus, we need to consider the problem in a new way to explain why structuralism is persistent and difficult to detect. Utilizing themes from the evolutionary, biological, and brain sciences, a model is developed that critiques prevailing conceptualizations of agents and structures and reconstructs the explanation of interaction. Agents and structures are deconstructed to their most essential characteristics, cognition and culture, and a multidisciplinary synthesis is offered to explain the generative structure of each variable. Evolutionary biology and neuroscience explain how culture structures cognition. A retardation in the pattern of human ontogenetic development results in delayed maturation of cognitive structures. Neuroplasticity allows synaptic connections in the brain to develop hierarchical patterns in response to environmental stimuli; thus, culture structures cognition. Clarifications made in evolutionary biology concerning the nature of causation are applied to the explanation of the structure of culture. As an artificial system, culture has ultimate (teleologic) and proximate (teleonomic) levels of causation, and cognition is the source of teleology. Failure to make this distinction confuses our understanding of culture and underpins structuralism. Neuroscience explains the distributed and associative structure of memory, which I relate to the multimodal structure of culture to explain why structuralism is persistent. The contribution of the model is the explanation of the causal mechanisms (neuroplasticity and teleology) of interaction. These explanations are then linked to the issues of epistemology, ontology, and conceptual anarchy in international relations.